Movies That Didn't Suck

I didn't have high hopes for The Princess and the Frog. It seemed to me to be too calculated, too orchestrated. It's hand-animated so every single frame of the thing was planned and orchestrated, of course, but that's not what I mean. From the hype and the trailers, it seemed like it was an "everything-and-the-kitchen-sink" effort to get back the prestige of the Little Mermaid/Beauty and the Beast/Aladdin days. It always bugs me when it seems like a movie is trying too hard and that's what The Princess and the Frog seemed to be doing.

However, I am happy to have been wrong. I'm sure there was definitely some of that "Let's recapture the magic!" thought and effort behind the film but, even so, it was a really enjoyable movie. The Randy Newman songs were great, the voice-work was nice, and the animation was good quality. It won't go down as one of Disney's greats. The characters are underdeveloped and the horn-playing alligator is one side-kick too many. The film is more of a Rescuers Down Under than a Snow White -- but that's okay. It's a good movie that helps preserve the sadly waning tradition of hand-drawn animation and I can get behind that. (The preserving it part, not the waning part.)



Now, I kinda knew I was going to like Sherlock Holmes -- it was more just a question of how much. I read quite a few of the original Doyle stories when I was a teenager (Why? Because I was a nerd. That's why.) and I've always had an affection for the character. I don't think Robert Downey Jr. has ever turned in a boring performance -- he's been in plenty of lame movies but I don't think as an actor that he has ever been uninteresting. Anyway, the character combined with the actor plus Guy Ritchie's typical stylized direction were bound to make the movie something interesting to watch. And it was. It was a lot of fun and there was no shortage of action. The plot takes a backseat to the character banter and to sequences -- in other words, the part where the loading dock of a warehouse explodes in really spectacular slow-motion is more important than that sequence's role in the overall narrative. Not to say it doesn't have a plot -- it's just that the director knew that the real enjoyment of the film would come from the cool stuff and that how the story shakes out didn't need as much emphasis.

Anyway, it was good stuff - worth seeing again. I'll probably add it to my library of nerdiness alongside Star Trek, Hellboy, The Dark Knight, etc. once it comes out on DVD.